


On Distant Shores

by Sheeana



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 20:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/pseuds/Sheeana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes from Mags's life as a tribute, a victor, and a mentor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Distant Shores

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Suzume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzume/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this!

They were choosing the pretty girls, the strong girls, the ones who could run fast or smile in the right way. They had them all lined up in a row on the wooden floor of the meeting hall, and then District 4's single victor and one of the elders walked down the row, picking out the ones they thought were the strongest or fastest or prettiest. Sometimes they asked one girl to step forward, to turn around or hold up her arms. Then they either took her to stand with the others or sent her back into the line.

Margaret was the sixth girl from the end of the line. She wanted to peer out and see how close they were, but she kept her eyes on her feet like the other girls. The boys were lined up on the other side of the room, all in a row, waiting to be chosen. Every eight year old in District 4 was here today.

She held her breath as one of the elders – she didn't remember his name – stopped in front of her. He spoke in low voices to another elder, but Margaret barely listened. Someone told her to step forward, so she did. Someone else told her to smile, so she did that too. Her heart was beating quickly in her chest. She wasn't sure if she wanted to be chosen or not. She wasn't sure why they were choosing children. Her parents always said the Games were going to end soon. Just a few more years, and then things would go back to normal, like they'd been before the war. If that was true, she didn't know why the elders thought they needed to choose anyone for training.

The victor stared down at her. Then he gave a single nod. Margaret stumbled briefly, but she went to join the others in the middle of the room.

-

"So, tell us something about yourself," said the Capitol man, with a broad smile on his face. Margaret was sitting politely in a chair beside him, dressed in a shimmering gown that brushed against her toes every time she moved. It was the color of the ocean at dawn on a clear day. It was the only thing in this place that reminded her of home.

"My friends call me Mags," she said, with one eyebrow raised, as if challenging them. Challenging everyone in the Capitol to dare to call her by her nickname. 

"Mags," the man repeated, smiling playfully, like she'd just confided a great secret. She smiled at him, and at everyone else in Panem. She was sixteen years old and she'd been chosen from among all the trained children in District 4 to represent her district in the Hunger Games, and she was ready for it.

-

The cannon went off as she straightened, pulling her hands out of the cold water that swirled around her knees. There was no blood on her fingers. There was no blood on the body. No bruises around the neck where she'd held his head under the water. Nothing to show why he was dead, except the net wrapped around his legs, tied down with the fishhooks she'd made herself out of materials she'd found in the arena.

She'd learned how to do this. They taught her. He wasn't the first person she'd killed in the arena – just the first life she'd ended with her bare hands. The first, and the last. As a whirring vehicle began to descend from above, she closed her eyes and turned her face towards the sun. She was going home.

-

She was sitting in front of a Capitol audience again. Her interviewer had tried to make the scene intimate and cozy, as if it was only the two of them talking, but she knew the truth. Everyone in Panem was still watching.

"Tell us how you did it, Mags. Tell us how you won."

"I just never stopped thinking about coming out alive," she replied, her answer memorized, confident. She had a smile on her lips every second of the last few days, like she'd been born with it. They'd taught her to do this, too.

-

After her interview, they took her to a banquet. They told her it was laid out in her honor, but she wondered if it was for her at all, after she saw the Capitol men and women eating, drinking, chatting, ignoring her. She might as well have been part of the decorations, except for when someone came up to her and she had to smile brighter, hold their hands, thank them for sponsoring her.

"Margaret, this is Quintus Stone. He was very generous," said Sedge, her mentor, and Mags turned to face him, smile already in place. Very generous meant he might be the only reason she was alive, but she didn't feel any gratitude when she looked him over. He wasn't ugly, but he reminded her of the sharks she sometimes saw circling under the longest docks, in the shallow water of the cove. He was waiting for something.

She leaned over and gave him a big kiss on the cheek.

"Well, aren't you sweet," he said. She smiled until her jaw ached and waved for the camera that was always following her, since the moment she stepped forward to volunteer at the Reaping.

"Sweet as pie," she replied, still with her overly bright smile.

"I think I speak for all of us here when I say we're looking forward to seeing you again in the Capitol, Mags."

"I think I speak for myself when I say I can't wait," said Mags, winking. Quintus wrapped his arm around her waist and led her away to dance, and she went willingly, grateful to be using her feet again for something other than running away.

-

Nothing and everything changed, when she returned to District 4. The other two victors, the one who had chosen her and a woman who had won two years after that, already lived in the big houses being built at the edge of town. She moved into a third, so new that the fresh scent of wood hung sweet in the air in every room. She wasn't a fisherman's daughter anymore. She wanted to think that she would always be that, no matter what happened to her, but she had learned years ago that the only thing that mattered in her life was training, winning, _smiling_. Always smiling. She had practiced her smile with her teachers, before her Games, but now she practiced in front of the mirror in her own house. Every morning before she went out, she showed herself her teeth and reminded herself that even when there weren't cameras, everyone was always watching.

-

Her Victory Tour was a whirling pool of sights and sounds, so many new places she could barely keep track of them all. She felt dizzy from the moment she left District 4. There were still lingering signs of war in the countryside – burned out houses that barely registered in her mind before the train zipped past them, downcast faces, bullet holes in stone walls of Justice Buildings. Sedge told her to keep her mouth shut and smile, so she did.

Something was starting to loom ahead of her, something darker and more ominous than the deep waters where the ocean floor dropped away at the edge of the cove, darker than the clouds that hung low over the water before a storm. There would be more Games next year, and a new set of tributes to fight to the death in the arena, and then another the year after that, and another. Mags knew how to fight and she knew how to smile, but the idea of a lifetime spent traveling to the Capitol to watch Games after Games was something else. She hadn't been trained for that. She'd only been trained to win, not for what came after.

When she came back to District 4, she spent a week fishing with her father, tying knots and making fishhooks while he hummed familiar songs. The air was clean and clear on the open water, but the dark thing still loomed somewhere ahead.

-

They held an extravagant party on the night before the next Games. All the previous victors and all the mentors were invited to attend. Invited, Mags already knew, actually meant _expected_. She sat complacently while her stylists wrapped her in blue silk and turned her dark hair into a cascade of curls down her back, and then while they painted her face and her fingernails. If there was a fisherman's daughter somewhere beneath it all, Mags didn't remember what she looked like.

Her entrance onto the rooftop terrace where the party was held was greeted with applause, but Sedge leaned in to whisper in her ear, "Don't expect this every year. You're only the star of the show until there's a new victor."

She wanted to tell him that she didn't care, but she was swept away by one of her sponsors, taken on a tour of the guests and introduced to dozens of faces painted in shades of gold and silver and red and blue, hair streaked with all the colors of the seashells sold in the weekend markets. Out of all those people, it was an ordinary-looking man who caught Mags's attention – brown hair, dark eyes, tall, confident, in simple dark clothes. Another victor. When her partner left her to pursue some other woman who had caught his eye, he held out his hand for her to take

"What's your name?" he asked, as he led her back out to the open space where they could dance.

"Margaret," she said, trying not to stare. She hadn't met anyone from another district before, except the ones she'd killed or watched die in the arena. "Oh, but you can call me Mags. Everyone does."

"I'm Shale."

"District 2," she said, remembering, as he spun her around. 

"That's right. Do you remember my Games?"

"Two years ago, right?"

"That's right too."

"Nice to meet you," Mags said, already putting on one of her smiles, but then he smiled and shook his head.

"No need for that," he said, laughing. The boys and girls of District 2 were trained too, Mags remembered. From the beginning, unless she was misremembering her history. She hadn't been to school in two years. A victor from District 2 would understand exactly what smiling meant, and who it was meant for. She let her smile drop away from her face, but a moment later it was replaced by another. This one was more genuine.

"Has anyone ever told you that you have a nice smile?" Shale asked, and Mags laughed along with him. It felt like treason. She felt free for the first time in two years.

-

"They picked me when I was six," Shale told her calmly later on, sitting with her on the rooftop of the building where the tributes stayed before the Games, amid the flowering bushes in the garden. "They told me they were going to teach me to win. I guess they did."

"I was eight. I never really thought I wouldn't win, but I never imagined what it would be like if I did," Mags replied. She was so grateful to have someone to talk to that she was forgetting not to be herself. He didn't seem to mind, though, because he still smiled at her.

"Do they have you mentoring yet? I mentored last year, but I'm sitting this one out."

"Not yet. Sedge - my mentor - says I have to watch for a few years first. We already have two victors. I'm the third. Oh, but you knew that. Everyone knows that," Mags said, feeling stupid. He just kept smiling.

"Everyone doesn't know you, do they?" said Shale. "Who you really are. I mean, tributes aren't just tributes. Victors aren't just victors. We're all more than that. I figure victors have to look after each other. We all share something. Will you tell me about yourself?"

For a moment she considered not trusting him, but she wasn't sure she could make herself walk away now. It had been so long since anyone had spoken to her like she was Mags from District 4, not Mags the victor of the Hunger Games. Even her family couldn't pretend not to know what she'd become.

"Okay," she said, "But you have to promise not to tell anyone else."

"I promise."

-

Sedge and his fellow victor dealt with mentoring the new District 4 tributes. Mags knew them; a boy and a girl who had trained with her, one a year older, the other a year younger. She tried to forget their names as she watched them die.

-

That was how it went, for the next five years of her life: Games, home, Games, home, Games. At home she helped train the children. It was different now. When she was a girl, she'd lived with her parents and come in for training four days a week, but now the children lived in a building constructed just for them. She'd heard about things like that from Sapphire, the District 1 victor from the year after her. Facilities that had no purpose but training children for the Games.

It had been five years, and the Games weren't gone. Her district seemed to be preparing for an endless future of Hunger Games. The unsettled feeling Mags had in her stomach never quite reached her lips, even at her weekly dinners with her parents. Her father never mentioned it either.

-

She was twenty-one when Sedge informed her that she would be mentoring this year's female tribute. A brief moment of pure, blind panic ensued, but then she remembered her training and her years as the Capitol's darling victor. This was part of what she was now.

The Reaping took place on a cloudy morning. The whole town was gathered in the square. Mags usually hung back, near the edge of the stage, but today she was sitting in a chair facing everyone she had ever known until her Games. A boy had already stepped forward and volunteered, and now a girl was walking to the front. Her name was Raya, and Mags had known her since she was eight years old. The rest of the children in training stayed where they were, waiting their turn to volunteer – if they were ever selected by the victors.

"I volunteer," Raya said, in a crisp, clear voice, confident and cool. Not eager like the districts closer to the Capitol. It wasn't an honor to represent District 4; it was a privilege. You didn't win the right; you were chosen.

"Come with me," Mags said, when they were alone in the hall of the Justice Building, after the girl had said her goodbyes to whatever family she had. There were cameras following them, but cameras were nothing to her. She was so accustomed to them that she barely remembered when she was in front of one and when she wasn't.

Raya obeyed, falling into step behind Mags. They were all taught to obey the victors. Raya had always had something of a stubborn streak during her training, but that could be good in the arena. It could also be bad, if it ran too deep.

"When we get to the Capitol, don't ever forget that you're on camera," Mags told her as they boarded the train, but Raya knew that. She'd been trained just as Mags had been. Maybe better, in the new facility. She was pretty, and Mags knew she was a talented archer. She was also one of the strongest swimmers in all of District 4, which was a feat when almost everyone in the district learned how to swim before they could walk. She might have a chance, if she played the game right.

"I know," Raya said coolly. Over-confident, Mags thought, but she said nothing about it. 

"Listen-"

"I know what I'm doing," said Raya, interrupting. "I'm going to bed. I'll see you in the Capitol."

Mags let her go.

-

"Do you remember what I said about finding food?" Mags asked, while Raya's stylists tied back her hair and rubbed a soothing lotion on her skin, the morning of the Games.

"I'm ready," Raya said. Her eyes were fixed on the mirror in front of her, determined. She didn't seem to be listening at all.

"Fine," said Mags, with a curt nod. She didn't understand the anxiety that kept her stomach so tight. Raya wasn't the first tribute she'd watched go into the arena, only the first one she'd mentored. Deep down she knew Raya wasn't likely to come out alive, but she still hoped. There was always a chance. Every tribute had a chance.

-

"What if there's no water?" Raya asked suddenly, when they were standing on the roof together, waiting for the hovercraft to take her away to the arena. She had a look of fear in her eyes now. All traces of her previous confidence were gone.

"Remember your training." What else could she say? She wondered if her mentor had felt the same way, six years ago. They saw each other, around the Victor's Village in the town, in the Capitol for the Games. They even sat together at Capitol banquets, but they never spoke. Sedge seemed to be pretending she didn't exist, and she was willing to leave it like that, now that she knew what it was like to be the one sending a tribute into the arena.

"What if-" Raya took a deep breath and visibly let it go. "No. I'm ready."

"Good."

"I'm ready," she said again, but Mags could see her nervous shifting, the way her eyes darted back and forth. There was nothing she could do about it now. She was years too late to correct any faults in Raya's training.

"Remember to smile," Mags said, one last reminder before her tribute was sent off to the arena. "You're on camera."

-

There was no formal procedure for the victors after the Games began, but most of them gathered to watch the first few hours together in a large dome in the center of the city. Its ceiling was a circle of glass letting in sunlight, far above, but as the large numbers on the viewing screen started counting down, a dark covered emerged to cover the glass, leaving the room in comfortable darkness. Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, the numbers read. Mags exhaled slowly and forced herself not to look away. The other victors, murmuring in low voices to each other, started to fall silent.

The numbers stopped, and Mags felt blinded by the sudden flash of light. It took her a moment to figure out what it was. Sand. Endless, brilliantly shining sand, reflecting the harsh light of the sun, as far as the eye could see in every direction. A desert. The arena was a desert.

"After last year's forest, I thought it would be something like this," Shale said, confiding quietly from his place at her side, and Mags felt sick. There was no water in a desert. The strongest swimmer in District 4 didn't know a single thing about surviving without water. She thought of a fish, flopping on the sun-heated deck of her father's boat. Slowing until it stopped. It took her a few minutes to work up the courage to look at the screen again.

Watching Raya die over the next six days was agonizing. Mags wanted to scream along with her when she crawled away from where she'd been sleeping, searching for water that didn't exist, water that could only be found in a few scattered places in the entire arena. Places Raya never found.

She had never felt more gratitude towards anyone than the District 9 girl who finally slit Raya's throat.

-

The next tribute she mentored - a boy - died on the third day. She kept a straight face as she watched it on the screen. An arrow in his chest, and he was dead in minutes. At least it was quick. If there was any mercy to be had in the arena, it was dying quickly. Living... well, Mags didn't know about that, whether it was merciful or not.

She didn't grieve for her lost tributes. Not for Raya, and not for the boy, even as she sat and spent lonely hours staring out the windows at the changing countryside, while the other victors from 4 kept to themselves.

-

"Your boy looks like he might win this one," Mags said to Shale, as they strolled across a bridge in the shopping district. She was given freedom to explore the city now, though it was hard not to be recognized. After days of searching over several years, they'd finally found somewhere quiet where they could talk alone.

"I don't know. Your girl has a wicked way of using those knives of hers."

"She won't win," Mags replied. She'd learned by now. It took more than skill with a weapon to win. Raya was too arrogant, the next girl too timid, the two boys after that both too mediocre to be noticed by many sponsors. It took a Capitol gift to keep most tributes alive. Almost no one survived without sponsors. This year's girl wouldn't get many. If only her words were as sharp as her knives, she might have done it, but her interview had already come and gone, and it was too late now.

-

"You're from District 4. You must be good at swimming," said the Capitol woman who was in charge of interviews, these past few years. Seventeen years had passed since Mags's Games. Only the faces had changed; everything else was the same. The Games continued. This year, though, Mags thought her tribute - a seventeen year old named Susanna - showed more promise than usual. She waited, watched from the sidelines while Susanna waved and twirled and put on a show, but didn't hope. She'd stopped doing that years ago.

"Who, me? Oh, see, that's something I was hoping you wouldn't ask," replied Susanna. "There's a secret I've been keeping my whole life. Do you want to hear what it is?"

"Oh, not if it will get you into trouble," said the interviewer, with a mock expression of deep concern.

"I can't swim," Susanna said, shrugging in an exaggerated manner. "I'm from District 4, and I can't swim! Please don't tell my parents. I don't think they could take it."

The audience was laughing uproariously now, and though Susanna's cheeks were flushed while she smiled sheepishly, Mags caught the knowing glint in her eyes. She began to wonder. She began to plan.

-

"And this girl of yours, this Susanna... she seems to know what she's doing," said Quintus, as he poured Mags a glass of deep red wine. The Capitol's lights spread out before him, the whole city laid out at their feet through the window of his home in one of the tallest buildings. He'd been inviting her here almost every year since her Games. Some sponsors held a special place in their hearts for their victors. Mags was only grateful that he'd never asked her to do anything more than smile and talk with him, or hang off his arm at parties.

"She does."

"Does she have a preferred weapon?"

"I've seen what she can do with a spear. Of course, those were just fish," Mags said conversationally, reaching for one of the grapes on the tray laid out before her. "I'm sure you're interested in seeing what she might do if it wasn't just a fish she was trying to catch."

"I might be. Do you think she can win?"

"I think she could, with the right sponsor. One who understands what a tribute needs."

"We'll see how she does on the first day, and then... well, as you said. I might be interested."

-

Seventeen years after Mags drowned a boy in shallow water, another District 4 girl fought off a pair of girls from the outer districts and emerged from the arena alive. Four victors from District 4. The entire district celebrated with fireworks on the beach, sent directly from the Capitol. Mags even allowed herself to enjoy it. It was a good feeling, bringing someone home with her at last.

-

When it rained in the Capitol, almost everyone stayed indoors, or scurried through networks of underground tunnels that sometimes emerged into glass corridors on the surface. The citizens of the Capitol never felt rain on their skin unless they chose to. In District 4, rain was a welcome companion in the suffocating midsummer heat, or it was a cold, miserable presence in the winter, but it was always part of life. No one could hide from the rain in District 4. Mags had never tried, even on the coldest winter days when she had to trudge to the market from the beach with her father and a fresh catch of fish.

She took Shale's hands and pulled him out into one of the courtyards, laughing as the rain struck her face. She didn't usually laugh anymore the way she used to, when she was a little girl. Maybe this year was special - she and Shale were both taking a break from mentoring. Neither of them had a tribute whose death they had to watch. Just this once, they could both enjoy the sights and sounds of the Capitol without the ever-present reality of the arena hovering over them. At least, it was hovering far away this year.

"Mags, I-"

"What, don't you have rain in District 2?"

"Of course we do, but we're not in District 2."

Mags relented and allowed him to walk her under the edge of a building, where the stone jutted out and kept them both dry.

"You don't talk about it," she said, thinking back. They'd known each other for so many years, but he never spoke about his home, even though he so frequently asked about hers.

"We work in quarries. There's nothing interesting about working in a quarry." Shale stopped, paused for a moment. He looked around, as if worried someone was listening, but the rain kept everyone inside and there were no cameras out here. "... No, I'm sorry, Mags. You've trusted me, and I owe you the same. They don't just train tributes, in 2. They train Peacekeepers. I think before the war, we were just workers, but I was only four when it started. I don't remember much of that. After the war, they began to set up training facilities. There's no real Reaping, in 2. Everyone is an eager volunteer."

"What are you saying?"

"We were loyal. We didn't rebel. Sometimes I wonder if it might have been better if- No. Don't listen to me. They might kill me if they knew I was telling you this. I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"Because victors aren't just victors," said Mags softly, while her mind reeled. It had been years since anyone had mentioned the war in anything but hushed, hurried tones. She'd begun to forget the way it used to be such a dark memory. Most of the children now didn't remember what it was like, in the years after it had ended. All the fear that everyone had tried to hide.

"No," said Shale, "We're not. I told you that, didn't I? When we were so young."

"You did."

"I guess I just wanted to tell someone, and I trust you. That's funny, isn't it? We were both trained to kill, and to lie. I shouldn't trust you, but I do."

"Who else is there to trust?" No one in the Capitol. Not the other victors. Shale was right - most of them were trained to kill, and those that weren't had learned along the way. Worse, they had all learned how to survive after the Games. None of them could say they had clean hands. She looked down at her hands, held them out into the rain just beyond the shelter of the stone building. Shale hesitated for a moment, and then reached for one of them. She let him have it.

-

"We could... leave," Shale said, the next year. "Just leave. Just the two of us."

"And go where?"

"Somewhere else. Somewhere safe."

"You know we can't do that," Mags said calmly. "They would find us. We're safe here, Shale. They never hurt tributes, and neither of us have any children. My parents have been dead for years. We're just two victors from Games hardly anyone remembers."

"Mags," he pleaded.

"No. This is better for us, and you know I... you know what I can't do. What I can't be." Other victors had families, children, loved ones, but she remembered too well. She was content to have the children she was training, and the people of her district, and her friends in the Capitol. She could trust, but not that much. She couldn't see how any victor could ever trust that much.

"There's no reason why-"

"Because we've been here too long," Mags said, quietly but fiercely. "I remember what it was like, when everyone was afraid."

"Everyone's still afraid!"

"We don't have to be. We won. We're safe," said Mags. The city was just beginning to light up for the evening, in dozens of pale colors. She slipped her arm into his and tried to play it off as a simple walk shared by two friends. Shale seemed about to argue, but then another couple passed by them, and he was forced to silence. Mags hoped that was the end of it.

-

That was how it went, for the next few decades years of her life: Games, home, Games, home, Games. She mentored more tributes than she could remember. She smiled for the Capitol crowds whenever she was given a cursory interview, but over the years, the Capitol began to forget her, and she began to forget them. She spent her time at home fashioning nets and making hooks, supervising the training of some of the children, trying to forget what she was. She was never successful, but she learned to put it out of her mind.

Shale never spoke about leaving again.

-

Forty-six District 4 tributes had come and gone since Mags had pulled her hands out of shallow cold water and left the arena alive. She had mentored twenty-three tributes now. Four of them had survived. The Capitol interviewers and sponsors told her she was one of the most successful mentors there was, but she didn't care about that. She tried to help her tributes win, and if they did, they did. If they didn't, they didn't. That was the way of things. There was only so much she could do, and then it was out of her hands.

She met Shale on the same bridge every year, the day before the Games. He was older too now – grey hair, wrinkles on his face, but he still stood straight and tall. Yet something was different this year. He looked younger even while he looked older. His hand rested on her back, a comfortable, friendly gesture from someone who had been her friend since she was barely more than a child.

"I miss you, when I'm at home," she confessed. The years had loosened her tongue around people she trusted, though there were very few of those. "Sometimes I wish we had run away."

"I don't like watching children die, year after year," he confessed in turn. Pure honesty was a rare thing in the Capitol. More precious than gold or jewels or even life, Mags had long since learned.

"Sometimes," she said quietly, staring down at the smooth water at the surface of the pool below them, "When I was a girl, they used to say there was another shore, on the other side of the sea. This was just after the Games began. The First Games. We used to wonder what was out there. Then I stopped wondering, for a long time, but now... sometimes I wonder if there are other places, where they don't teach little girls and boys to smile for the cameras."

"It's a good thing I like you," Shale said, and Mags's lips quirked. She could have been killed for saying less. She knew a number of people who had been. Victors learned quickly not to speak out of turn. Mags had always been willing to do whatever she was told, but she was getting older. What had seemed terrifying before had long since faded into dull complacency, year after year of becoming numb to watching what was going on around her. Maybe she was ready to feel the wind on her face again.

"Do you know my father told me the Games would be over in five more years, the day before I was chosen for training? Oh, they call us Careers now. I think it's a good word, for what we are. This is our job and our life."

"Five years or fifty, or maybe never." The bitter anger in Shale's tone was shocking to Mags, and she had thought herself long past the ability to be shocked by anything.

"There's nothing we can do. This is how it is."

"Right. That's right. Nothing we can do," he echoed. They were quiet after that, but Mags still sensed something between them. Something hanging above them, like salty, misty air before the sky cleared in the morning.

-

Shale wasn't at their usual meeting place the next year, on the bridge overlooking the pools. He wasn't at the opening ceremonies, or any of the private parties held for victors and potential sponsors before the Games. He wasn't anywhere, Mags soon found out.

"An accident," a younger victor from District 12 with a sharp, knowing gaze was explaining quietly to her, before the Games began. He'd been in the second Quarter Quell, she seemed to remember, but that was years ago. "You know what that means, right?"

"Of course I know," Mags replied. She was too old for this. An accident. That was what happened to so many victors' families, when they didn't comply with the Capitol's demands – accidents. Maybe someone had heard him talking to her, or maybe he'd said something else. Done something else. In the end, it made no difference. He was dead, and she was still alive. All these years since she was an uncertain little girl, and that was all her life had ever been. Living while other people died.

An odd ache settled into her chest, as she watched the ceremonies with disinterest. It took her days to realize that she had finally remembered what grief felt like.

-

"It's been a long time since your Games, Mags. We can still call you Mags, right?"

She was on camera again, sitting across from a Capitol man. It felt like returning to the distant past, before her skin became weathered and her hair turned grey. One of the stylists had offered to fix that for her, but she liked it the way it was.

"Oh, yes," she said, with a nod and a polite smile. It was a different game she was playing now. No longer a pretty young girl trying to impress Panem; now she was a wise old mentor, and she had to act the part.

"Tell us about your life back home. I understand you've never been married?"

"I never found the right man," Mags joked.

"Now a question I'm sure everyone's interested in: how do you think this year's tribute pool looks? Anyone stand out?"

"You know I'm going to say District 4's tributes stand out. Come on, ask a real question." The audience laughed, and Mags gave them a wave.

A picture came up on the screen behind them. She turned to see it, dreading, because she already knew what it must be – her and Shale, standing together at a banquet, each with a glass of sparkling wine in their hands, laughing at some joke one of them must have said. She couldn't place the exact date, but they looked younger than she was now. Certainly younger than she felt.

"We were all so sad to learn about Shale's death. Two years ago, wasn't it?"

"Yes. I believe so," Mags forced out, keeping her back straight, her face expressionless. She didn't expect the spark of anger she felt deep inside her, somewhere she had once thought numbed to feeling. Anger towards the people who had made her what she was.

"You were close friends, as I understand it. Tell me, did you ever...?"

"No," Mags said sharply – her one moment of weakness in front of the cameras. Maybe it no longer mattered. She was an old woman now. She'd seen more Games than almost anyone else. There was nothing left for them to take except her life. They could kill her. She could have an _accident._ But they wouldn't, because the message had already been sent, loud and clear. She knew what it meant. She just needed to decide how to answer. "We never did."

-

She had started to dream again. None of the victors mentioned it, but she knew they all shared the same dreams. Arena after arena, tribute after tribute. Mags often dreamed she was in a boat, lost in a foggy swamp. Children screamed and begged all around her, but she could never reach them, and there was no dry land. The water went on forever.

Now she dreamed of shores beyond the fog, and someone waiting there for her.

-

The oldest victors, the ones who had seen the most Games and mentored the most tributes – they were the ones who had the honor of selecting the children to be trained these days, now that there were more than enough District 4 victors to go around. It had been Mags's duty for three years now. Every summer, she went to the meeting hall and walked along a row of children, selecting the ones with the strongest arms and the prettiest smiles. Her face was lined with wrinkles, but her eyes were still sharp.

She came to a stop in front of one of the boys. He was tall, for an eight year old.

"Smile for me," she instructed. His gaze darted back and forth nervously, as if looking for help, but a moment later he looked up at her and tried a tentative smile. That was when she noticed the color of his eyes, and she knew. "What's his name?"

"Finnick Odair," said the younger victor at her side.

She considered him for a long moment. Then she gave a single nod. He joined the others in the center of the room.


End file.
